Jacksboro

Jacksboro, the county seat of Jack County, is a prosperous agribusiness center located at the intersection of U.S. highways 281 and 380 in the approximate center of Jack County. Attracted by the offerings of the Texas Emigration and Land Office (see PETERS COLONY), settlers first arrived in the Jacksboro area in the mid-1850s. Along the banks of Lost Creek a small community of farmers took root and spread out over the pastureland between the river and the waters of the West Fork of Keechi Creek, south of the original settlement. As the distance from the original site increased and the number of buildings, including a church and schoolhouse, grew, the settlers began referring to the town taking shape as Mesquiteville. The town was chosen county seat in 1858 and renamed Jacksborough, or Jacksboro, in honor of William H. Jack and his brother Patrick, both veterans of the Texas Revolution. That year the first stagecoach arrived from the Butterfield Overland Mail; this service ran until early 1861. Regular postal service to the town began in 1859.

Jacksboro, located in one of the few Texas counties to vote against secession, was the most westward settlement still standing in Texas after the Civil War. It had been devastated by Indian raids and consisted of fewer than a dozen ramshackle buildings, most in ruins. In 1870 the completion of Fort Richardson just south of the town made the site safe for settlers; the population of the county seat increased to several hundred, and the town became established as the trading center for the county. Jacksboro received national publicity in 1871 when the Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree were tried for murder in the district court there. The town had three flour mills, a brickyard, a cotton gin, two churches, a school, and a newspaper, the Jacksboro Frontier Echo. By the late 1880s a second paper, the Gazette, had replaced the Frontier Echo.